Friday, January 29, 2010

The Retaliation of the Fig Trees When Fig Wasps Don't Service Them

Mysteries of nature are always a source of wonder. Reading about figs and fig wasps made me realize that we have only scratched the surface in our endeavour to solve the mysteries of nature. We are yet to fathom lot of facts from the abysmal ocean.

It is a known fact that Fig wasps lay their eggs inside the fruit where the wasp larvae can safely develop, and in return, the wasps pollinate the figs. But here is the surprise. Scientists have discovered that when a wasp lays its eggs but fails to pollinate the fig, the trees get even by dropping those figs to the ground, killing the baby wasps inside.

The researchers of this fascinating study are Charlotte Jandér, a Cornell graduate student in neurobiology and behavior, who conducted the study as a Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute predoctoral fellow and Edward Allen Herre, a staff scientist at the Smithsonian institute in Panama.

Details of the research appears online on Jan. 13 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B